Re: NNG: The Strasburg Rail Road Company: Sounds of Steam in Paradise

Strasburg is my happy place.

My parents live about 15 minutes away on the north side of Lancaster. I rode the Strasburg before I could walk. I try to ride it at least once a year if I can get back home. And long before I'd ever given thought to Colorado narrow gauge railroading I learned that proper steam locomotives have square fireboxes and keystones on the front.

My first narrow gauge rides were--naturally--on the EBT. I can be seen in the Emory Gulash 2-hour EBT video standing with my father and brother in the deep snow for a runby during one of the EBT Winter Spectaculars.

My father had a huge collection of railroad books and many of them were of the Colorado narrow gauge but none of them were of any real interest to me until 1988 and a trip to Durango. I became a die-hard Colorado narrow gauge fan after that.

Never lost my love of Pennsy, though. My time at Penn State involved trips to the Middle Division and Horseshoe Curve to see what was then a parade of blue Conrail. At the time I was tinkering in HOn3 but had neither the cash nor the skills to make a real go of it. Then came my 22 years of military service. I settled back on Pennsy in N scale, modeling it on a hollow core door. I had a few articles about it in N Scale Magazine and Kalmbach's Great Model Railroads (2014), but orders to Colorado Springs and the Air Force Academy put me right back in the thick of narrow gauge country. I sold my Pennsy stuff and switched to HOn3 and am building a 12 x 14 foot Rio Grande Southern First District layout in the basement of the home I retired to from the USAF here in the Springs.

But my heart still occasionally longs for Strasburg on a warm June afternoon when the corn is only waist-high. The smell of coal smoke and the beautiful song of the Reading 6-chime mounted on old Number 90 (the Colorado connection again!) is an instant "reset" for the soul.

Thanks for sharing!!!

___________
Dave Vollmer
Rio Grande Southern in HOn3
Colorado Midland in N scale

Colorado Springs, CO



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/28/2018 07:21PM by Dave Vollmer.